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Launching of the BBVA Developers Center website and implementation of Innova Challenge Big Data represent BBVA's first step towards strengthening open collaboration with the community of developers and towards creating its own applications ecosystem.

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API and apps. Two sides of the same coin. BBVA has laid down a bridge between application developers and one of the raw materials they use: data. With this gesture, the bank offers access to part of its information within the framework of the Innova Challenge Big DataInnova Challenge Big Datacontest for developers, which was implemented last October 1st.

With this decision, the bank puts one of its most appreciated goods at the disposal of the public, since the information it gathers through payments made by users of bank cards can be very useful to develop services. There is only one additional missing ingredient: Creativity. And here is where the community of developers plays a role, and, in the case of Innova Challenge, participants of the contest who develop applications using this information.

But how can developers access this data set? For this, we have made use of our BBVA Developer Center portal. Here, after registration, developers will find BBVA's API Data, a services interface that, for the moment, houses the data necessary to develop applications in the Innova Challenge Big Data competition, but to which we will add new services in the coming months.

Specifically, developers can access through the Developer Center site services providing data about customers, products and contracts (data is anonymous and aggregated, in compliance with current data protection legislation). In the near future, the BBVA Developer Center site will also house payment services APIs.

Why now? We are aware that user interaction with the Bank still has a long way to go. The services offered through the various channels use preset itineraries that are flexible, efficient and pleasant to use.

However, we believe the time has come to go a step further. We want our customers to enjoy the best service through all channels. But at the same time, we want to give the opportunity to those who are capable of doing it to design the kind of services, applications and user experience they want from the Bank.

Innova Challenge Big Data is one of our first experiences in getting closer to this socialization of our resources. Gradually, we will make other APIs available to the public and in the coming months we will open our own marketplace where these applications can be downloaded.

In this way, following the footsteps of major companies that have created their applications ecosystems, BBVA will offer developers a platform allowing them to obtain the unique raw material represented by the huge amount of data to which a bank has access. Developers will also find in this platform a means to market and make profit out of their work.

These actions –the development of the Developer Center site, the opening of API Data and the development of Innova Challenge Big Data– form part of one of the pillars of BBVA's innovation strategy, i.e. an open platform for collaboration with people, companies or institutions that may not be part of the Bank. Thanks to this collaboration, at BBVA we believe we can launch new initiatives improving the value offer for our customers.